Help with food drive ideas

I am in charge of setting up a food drive for our rotary club and I'm looking for creative ideas for it. We meet once a week and I'm trying to avoid just having people bring bags of groceries to each meeting. I'm also looking for ways to ensure that people bring in good food instead of that can of beets they've had in the cabinet for 2 years.Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

You could ask people to donate a favorite recipe and all of the non-perishables items to make it. At the end of the drive you could make a small photocopied booklet of all the donated recipes as a thank you to all who donated!

As for keeping people from bring bags of groceries to each meeting, is there a central location where food can be collected?

I used to volunteer at a nonprofit that did food baskets at holidays. One thing we asked for was gift certificates from Safeway etc. It was easy for the donar and easy for us to put baskets for families together. That way they could have perishables at the time they wanted/needed them. We also posted a list of needed food. That seems to keep the old expired date food out. Other drives I have seen asked for canned goods as part of the price of admission to a movie, concert, play.

Please make sure the gift certificates are used responsibly. Having worked at a food shelf, the idea of directly giving our clients a gift certicate was unthinkable. Still, it may be the only way for some donors to open their wallets.

Most non-profits can do much more with cash. They buy in bulk. I don't think it hurts to let your prospective donors know this.

I sure there are a lot of interesting ideas out on the WWW. Don't forget to google.

You can also ask that if people don't donate food, could they donate any small change they have such as pennies lying around the house. With that money, you could donate cash or purchase much needed items yourself.